Tuesday, 4 August 2009

I almost thought I wasn't going to post today, but it turns out I did, eigh? EIGH? Yes, i did. This probably won't be as long as most posts in recent days, because [for once] I don't have much to say. Yes, I don't.

Hmm. My hands smell like washing-up liquid. I guess that's because I was doing the washing-up today and the right glove was broken so I had to do it one-gloved. Dang.

So yeah, I was watching rubbish BBC Three programmes last night about underage pregnancies. Some of the people on those programmes are so... ignorant? I briefly thought about making a mock-programme called 'You've got sprog!' but then decided against it when I started thinking up scenes in it that could insult just about everyone, from women to northern people. A shame, really - I was just preparing my 'Kevin the idiotic underage father' accent. He could have been playing his DS in the hospital as well.

Yes, I have a strange mind. Who doesn't? To everyone else, your mind is a strange place, simply because it is so different to their minds. For all you know, everyone may see blue as a different colour. Of course, there would be no way to describe the difference in colour because you'd just call it 'blue', and that colour would correspond to another colour in someone else's mind, in someone else's eyes. Though this may be shocking, it's good to know that it really doesn't matter and that we can all live our lives happily with or without knowing.

I went to the opticians today. Tried on some glasses. Obviously. I really want the large, old fashioned-looking ones, but they simply don't suit me. Everyone seems to want me to wear those thin, modern-looking ones. And, if I have the big ones, then I'd have to be making a 'fashion statement' of sorts, and I can't do that at school. Oh noes. If I were famous, walking on the red carpet every friday night, then I could, but no, not now.

I'll leave you with this final graphic I made just now:

Fighting the system. Something not to be attempted, unless you happen to be Schmätziehoffern. Hah, you thought I'd forget about Jimmy McGrew and his Homo Crew. I didn't.

Monday, 3 August 2009

Well, yah, I've decided to continue with my series of daily rants about random crap. Hopefully Jimmy McGrew will pop up, along with other characters. I must say not much new stuff has happened today. I didn't go anywhere, so that eliminates the 'examining life outside my doors' aspect of these blog posts. Geez, this is gonna be hard.

I played The Force Unleashed, and pretty much hated it apart from the parts when you throw stuff into stuff, chuck people into stuff, fling stuff into people and generally have fun with the game's physics engine. Then you realise that you have to kill yet another damn Rancor in the most boring way humanely possible. Then you throw some more shit, kill some random glowing Felucians then come across TWO Rancors. You hold your head in your hands, take your head out of your hands and just force-electrocute the silly creatures.

Then you get to the cutscenes. Oh my, the cutscenes. They said on the game's website that they did that animation thing where you place dots on someone's mouth and they say the lines, then the dots can automatically make the game characters' mouths move. You even saw the 'actors' doing it in some studio in Lucasarts. Turns out, when you get to the cutscenes, the characters just look like demented rabbits, only moving their top lips. And the voice work is truly awful. Then the game glitched on me and showed the ending half way through the middle of the game.

Last night I watched the BBC's recent film-omentary 'Man on Wire'. What a fantastic film! A great soundtrack accompanying some great re-enactments of Philippe Petit's jaw-dropping tightrope-walk between the World Trade Centre towers. Petit himself was extremely articulate, if not a bit obnoxious. What would have been nice is Petit's reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attack on his beloved twin towers, which, as horrific as it was at the time, has now just become a way for me to tell whether a New York-based film was made before or after 2001. Sad, isn't it?

I made a new Flash element for Brickspace, but that speck of information is utterly useless. So nothing really happened, today, I mean. Of course stuff happened in the history of human development, and I'm sure millions of other people in this overcrowded world have had a fantastic day that they would never forget. Sadly, I'm not one of those people. I won't remember this day. Then again, with this blog post, maybe I am trapping a part of me today to be held here for ever, so that I can read this post again some time in the future, and be transported back to now, to today, to Monday 3rd August 2009. Or at least that's how it's meant to work. I've tried the whole text-time-capsule thang before and it hasn't worked. There's a theory about time always looping, how every moment in the whole of history, all existing at the same time, all existing now. It would make time travel a whole lot easier. I was only told that a theory of that existed a couple of months ago in an interview for the Rolls-Royce science prize, but I've had the idea of simultaneous-time for years now. Really, I have.

I really should do a 365-project. But I want to find a topic to do it on, not just anything. If I do it about anything, it will fall down some stairs into an infinite ocean of rubbishness. So what topic? I dunno. It won't all be that topic - I'll take part in Flickr pool bandwagons every now and again, but I want something with 300 possible parts to explore. I was going to do an Alphabet project on non-English letters like Eth and accented letters, but that just never happened. Also, there's the whole 'school' problem. I can't bring my camera into school, so will all the school-day photos just be me at home or on the way to or from school? My original idea was to wait for my gap year, and do it then.

Have you ever thought the devil could be a pig? Not the real devil, Dick Weatherington, but just a depiction of the devil. No, a depiction of death. A big long black cloak, with a hood, with a pig's snout pointing out. A dead pig's snout. Falling out. Not actually looking right at you but seeing everything in the room. Scythe? Maybe. On a tricycle? Nah, a bit clichéd. I've got to work on this...

Sunday, 2 August 2009

In continuation from yesterday's randomly random outburst of UTTER MADNESS, I'm back for what I hope will be a daily update of what I've christened improv-typing. So just let me blab on about whatever the hell I want to, and I'll let you not put your cutlery in the right way up in the dishwasher, and we'll get along swell.

So what's new today? The date. It has never been 2nd August 2009 ever before now, and it never will be, so suck it all up, vacuum Clooney. Whut? Nothing.

Anyways, Jimmy McGrew (and Dick Weatherington and Schmätziehoffern), I went to a boot sale today. I was hoping to be one of those insanely lucky guys on Flickr who find loads of Classic Space sets MISB (mint in sealed box) with untouched minifigs and all. In fact, I found some rugs, a Slavic book and several grumpy-looking people. None of which I bought. Who'd even want a grumpy-looking person? What use would that be other than as a coat stand? Actually, now I come to think of it, one of those grumpy-looking people would have been very useful.

So that was a failure. No Lego, just some God-awful Mega Bl*ks. Shudder.

In other news, your mother was today found shoplifting from the pound shop. Jim Crackles, manager of the 99p Store approximately three stores up from where your mother was caught this morning, says he recognises her from several shopliftings in his store earlier today. Tsk tsk.

So yeah, I watched The Commitments! I've listened to their music for ages now, and the movie finally came on TV. It was great! Next up: Blues Brothers.

Saturday, 1 August 2009

OK, that last post has got me in the mood for a good long rant. So, basically, I'm fed up of people on Flickr decorating their names with grammatical symbols and accents without actually considering them. Sure, it's quite a weak argument, but I'm angry nonetheless. At least I'm not blabbing on about people using 'Legos' instead of 'Lego'.

First up, and foremost in my conciousness is the Latin letter O with a stroke - Øø. I don't know if it's coincidence, but Lego Flickrers seem to use it a lot, and it's an accent which pops up in Danish as well as other Scandinavian languages. For those who care, Ø makes a sound which can vary (in Danish) from an 'er' sound to the last sound in the French 'sœur'. In some cases, this works - 'Kilø' becomes something like 'killer' (a little scary, but a normal word nonetheless). In other cases the use of Ø falls flat on its face - take 'Jerrø' as an example. And no, I don't care if it was just profile name decoration, whenever I see it I see it not as decoration but as different sounds, dammit. So just know what you're putting into your name.

One guy with whom I have a certain annoying bone to pick is Mr. David 'Gðmolka'. On further investigation, it turns out David's surname is 'Gomolka'. I've never seen, however, someone mistake Eth (Ðð) as a progression on an O before. Eth, if you haven't already guessed, makes a 'th' sound, specifically that at the start of 'this' or 'the' rather than 'thatch'. So apparently he's 'Gthmolka'.

Some people like to decorate their names with MORE THAN ONE accent. Let's take poor old 'Zåçh Ç' for example. I know I really shouldn't pick on him, but I guess he just doesn't learn French at school. FOr those of you who don't know, Çç is a c with a cedilla, which makes a soft c - or s - sound. Zach has also included an a with a ring (Åå)in his name. This pops up here and there, and is found in all Scandinavian languages. It is like Ø, but more to the sound of 'or' or 'aaor'. I'll leave it up to you to work out the correct pronunciation. The capital of that letter - Å - is also the Ångström sign, which is some unit of measurement of atoms or 'summin.

Then there's those people who like to include weird accents in their names. These can look 'cooler' (dare I say 'awesomer') but then you run the risk of the accents not showing up on older computers which have an older version of Unicode. I won't say anything bad about 'Kǻrrde', because he's actually a nice guy, but his compound a with-ring-above-acute (Ǻǻ) has really got me guessing. An acute accent can either mean a sound which starts low and goes high (only slightly, though) or a sound which is the main stress of the word. I'm hoping it's the latter.

My final nit-pick is with people who over-decorate, who add extensive accents to their names, namely 'ӃilǝƵillλ'. Some of those symbols in his name I had to delve deep in my character palette to find. The first K I had to copy direct from his Flickr 'stream, so I've no idea what it means. I've looked through the whole K library - with right hooks, left hooks, commas below, dots below, and more, on pages of my character palette that I didn't even know existed. My best guess is that it's a phonetic symbol. Next up is the turned E (Ǝǝ). I'm pretty sure it's something phonetic, but it is also used in general notation-or-something. After some research, I've found out the Z with a stroke (Ƶƶ) was used in a Tatar language in the 20th century to show a sound close to that in the middle of 'fusion' (nowadays shown as Žž). And, to cap it all off, the final letter (meant to be an A) is either the Greek letter Lamda or a turned Y. So ya.

Oh, and I know you've probably noticed I have a symbol in my name too. So yes, I shouldn't really be insulting other like me but I do have some right - because I know what they mean. I have added Eng (Ŋŋ) into my name knowlingly and with acceptance of people calling me 'Jong'. Besides, this post wasn't really about me insulting people. It was about you lot of readers learning a little bit more about those weird letters you find in the 'Insert Symbol' palette in Word. And I bet you found some of it interesting.

I mean NO offence whatsoever to ANYONE, so don't get all lairy at me.

~John

UPDATE: It turns out the Ӄӄ at the start of KileZilla's name is in fact a Cyrillic letter. The Cyrillic alphabet is an alphabet used in languages like Russian and Kazak (you will have seen Cyrillic scripture in the film Borat). Even still, it's the Cyrillic letter Ka with a Latin accent (a hook), so it's pretty rare.

Well, OK, not more. Maybe more. I'm just improv-ing this post, I guess this blog just needs updating, no matter what with. Yah, so get ready for a rant.

Have you ever noticed how small we are? How something in a TV programme can mean everything to you, but in the general scheme of the universe, it's just some tiny speck in a civilization of some planet somewhere which, itself, is a tiny speck on the face of the universe. Gee, now you feel all small. Heh.

So ja, Brickspace's Flash animated banner, which has been in production for many months, has finallally been released (-allally)! Huzzah! Go check it out by following the link to Brickspace on the sidebar -->

What else? Oh yeah, I saw Moon! You didn't think I was going to, but I did, Jimmy McGrew! I went up to the Curzon cinema in London and saw it! I dids! And it was GREAT! Even Jimmy McGrew hasn't seen it, and I have, Dick Weatherington! Yes I HAVE!! Oh looksie, a new graphic:

Where'd that come from? Who knows (apart from Jimmy McGrew and his gay partner Dick Weatherington, and also their dog Schmätziehoffern)!?

Oh, I gots me a new signiature as well - even though I never had an original signiature to progress from. It just sounds better to say 'new'. It even includes the cool n that I have in my Flickr username. So what is that n? Well, it's the Latin letter Eng, and it's one of a series of Latin letters that were made up to show certain sounds in English - so it's not part of the IPA (though it is the IPA symbol for the 'ng' sound). Now, if you've bothered to look at the previous brackets, which is probable because they're all that blocked your way towards this sentence and, admit it, you'll read whatever's right-of or next-line-far-left of what you're currently reading, you'll have a headstart on what Eng sounds like. Why not actually say the word 'Eng' and hear that great sound at the back of your throat? That's the 'ng' sound, nitwit. And that's what Eng does. Oh, and no, 'Johŋ' is NOT pronounced like 'Jong'. Agreed? Yes.

I'd like to thank all my family (sob), Sunil Patel (sob), Wikipedia (sniff) and the Apple character palette for helping me win this (sob) prestig(sob)ous award. Th(sob)thank you!! (sob)(sob)(sob)

Please note the above '(sob)'s have no relation to an abbreviation of a certain insult which consists of accusing the insultee that they (automatically being thought of as male, though the insult does not have the same effects of those of the female persuasion) are descended from a female dog. Instead it only acts to show that, whilst the above person was making the above speech (no sexual innuendo intended, though no sexual innuendo should be made out of the preceding statement in the first place - if you have found the preceding statement somehow funny in a sexual manner, please inform us), the forementioned person was sobbing. The verb 'sob' here has no relation to that in which 'to sob' means 'to tell someone they are a male descendant of a female dog'. Thank you for your time.

Please note this blog has sadly died (on 1/1/12). You can still read all the posts etc, but I have moved my work/links/portfolio to wndalton.com

My name is John. This is my blog.

On JOHNSPACE you can find posts on a plethora of topics, though design, art, typography and Denmark are the usual suspects. I also post movie reviews, chat about my spectacularly uninteresting life and show you guys the latest stuff I've created. Enjoy!

Last year I did a 365-day blogging project. Check out the Crap Filter for its best posts.

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If you've been affected by any topics on this blog, then you get affected real easily. Try to toughen up, mate. The world's a grim place - buckle up and dry those tears of "he talked about design, boo hoo". Shit happens.